British Sold Jet Engine to Soviets that Was Used in MiG-15. Baffling

SilicdyneTRF
Shop deals on ebay
rocket sok
The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
brockrwood

brockrwood

Well-Known Member
TRF Supporter
Joined
Jun 9, 2015
Messages
2,877
Reaction score
3,266
Location
Denver, Colorado, USA
I read this story a few years ago. One reason the MiG-15 was such a capable fighter plane was the Rolls-Royce designed Nene jet engine that propelled it. The British sold several advanced Nene jet egines to the Soviet Union in 1946 and 1947 on the condition that the engines were to be used for non-military purposes. Seriously? The Russians promptly reverse engineered their own version of the engine and installed it in the MiG-15. The MiG-15 was a formidable jet fighter that was responsible for killing many western aviators in the Korean War.
What were the leaders of the British government thinking? Were they unaware that a Cold War was brewing? In hindsight, it seems an incredible blunder. But, maybe that is hindsight. World War II had just ended and the Soviets were still allies of the British and Americans. Still. Seriously? Would Truman have sold an advanced jet engine to Stalin? I don’t think so.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/t...et-allowed-russias-mig-15-fight-the-air-26385
 
At the time the west viewed the Soviet Union was an ally There is a show on Pluto tv now and then I have watched that talks about this issue
 
Companies in the U.S. were actively doing business with Germany well into 1941. A lot of famous people supported Germany; Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh to name two. Both were anti-Semites.
 
If memory serves (and it might not) The deal was pushed through with the help of powerful British communist, Stafford Cripps.
 
I read a similar or the same story a while back as well.
The sale of the engines were to help the UK to recover from WWII and to open up trade between the East and the West. (UK & USSR)
There was extensive negotiations involved and in the end the amount of money exchanged, and future sales in other areas was the driving factor.
The MIG's engine wasn't the only factor that made it a great fighter.
The jet's design around the power plant put together is what made it work so well at what it did.
Putting an engine in any pre-designed air frame would not have had the same performance effect.
The West, simply put, got the better end of that deal all around for getting idea's for jet engines at the time.
The USSR was so involved putting resources into the rocket area, they fell behind in jet engine design.
They needed a quick fix to catch up, and they did a good job of getting what they needed to catch up.
As always, hind sight is 20/20 and at the time the UK was trying do one thing and the USSR played on it letting them think that while they had a hidden agenda. They have always been good at that. I would assume Russian's would make excellent Poker Players.
 
Zeus-cat said:
Companies in the U.S. were actively doing business with Germany well into 1941. A lot of famous people supported Germany; Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh to name two. Both were anti-Semites.
Click to expand...
USAAF could not target the Ford truck factory in Cologne, but a few bombs missed and hit the factory. Reparations for the damage paid by US Government to Ford motor company. Plant never went out of production for the NSDAP! Capitalism rules!

No Coca Cola? Give me a Fanta!

Why did the Godless Red Hoard Soviets have all those US looking trucks during the Hitler Stalin Pact to invade Poland, Finland and the Baltic States? History is such a bummer.
 
IIRC there was a game of billiards involved in the deal... Had the game gone the other way, the Russians wouldn't have gotten the jet engines.
 
The MiG-15 engine issue is a little confusing, and maybe somebody can offer some answers! We've heard the story about how the USSR got the Rolls Royce Nene; the original MiG-15 used the RD-45 engine, which I'm assuming was based directly on the Nene with only minor changes. The improved MiG-15bis had the VK-1 (named for Vladimir Klimov) which I'm assuming was a more substantial redesign of the Nene. By the time the design evolved into the MiG-17F, the engine was a VK-1F with afterburner. One irony of the Korean War is that a dogfight between the MiG-15 and F9F-2 Panther featured two opposing jet fighters with basically the same engine!
 
Rolls Royce was given ownership of the IP from the broken down mental case that was Frank Whittle. By Jove it was wartime! The rest is super profitable history!

A few members of the British elite where a little Red so some stuff happened. Keep those skeletons in the closet. Baria kept his in the basement.
 
Funny things have happened. Of course, the titanium for the SR71 was sourced (very indirectly!) from the Soviet Union. And my folks recalled the scrap metal dealers before WW2 buying for Japan. And another relative, then a young guy in the late 1930s, recalled working around Puget Sound packing "gunpowder" in silk bags for the US Navy. Silk sourced from Japan.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top